In most modern high schools, P.E. is a complete blow-off class — something to take when you don’t play a sport, and have to fulfill a health/fitness-related elective. Participants often sit on the bleachers and talk, or half-heartedly play some basketball. 

There was a time in this country when P.E. was taken more seriously, however, and it reached its absolute apex at La Sierra High School in Carmichael, California.

During the 1950s and 60s, La Sierra boasted what was arguably the most rigorous P.E. program in the country, if not the world. The so-called “La Sierra System” was born in a time when World War II was over, the Cold War was still heating up, and prosperity and technological advancements were making life increasingly sedentary and comfortable. In this atmosphere, there existed a national concern over whether Americans were becoming too soft, overweight, and complacent to not only defend their country in war, but to vigorously meet the challenges of peace.

As President John F. Kennedy wrote in “The Soft American”:

physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body; it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. . . . [We] know what the Greeks knew: that intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong; that hardy spirits and tough minds usually inhabit sound bodies.

In this sense, physical fitness is the basis of all the activities of our society. And if our bodies grow soft and inactive, if we fail to encourage physical development and prowess, we will undermine our capacity for thought, for work and for the use of those skills vital to an expanding and complex America.

Thus the physical fitness of our citizens is a vital prerequisite to America’s realization of its full potential as a nation, and to the opportunity of each individual citizen to make full and fruitful use of his capacities.

To stem the physical deterioration of his fellow Americans and promote the idea of developing a sound mind, in a sound body, JFK utilized the President’s Council on Physical Fitness to reinvigorate physical education programs around the country, and looked to La Sierra as an example of what was possible in this line.

The first few minutes of the above video will give you a look at what some aspects of the La Sierra program were like.

The La Sierra System had been developed by WWII-veteran Stan LeProtti, who was inspired by the classical, “whole man” approach to fitness that had been championed by the ancient Greeks. LeProtti’s program sought to improve the strength, agility, balance, flexibility, power, and endurance — as well as the leadership qualities — of all the males in the student body, not just those relatively few boys who participated in organized athletics. The program not only incorporated physical exercise — a regimen that included an intense 12-minute calisthenic warm-up, sports, games, dance, combatives, gymnastics, running, aquatics, and off-the-ground work on various apparatuses like peg boards — but also involved regular meetings to talk about the philosophy — the why — behind it. Students were taught that the fitness routines in which they engaged not only built their bodies, but prepared their minds for learning and their spirits for tackling life’s setbacks. 

The “Philosophy” section of the La Sierra P.E. handbook includes both “Physical Fitness” and “Psychological Fitness” as two of the program’s goals, and lists the following among the aims of the latter:

• Pupils are systematically and deliberately required to ‘go all out’ within their individual capacities in a number of physical development activities, thereby progressively raising endurance and tolerance of pain levels.
• Pupils develop a well-disciplined attitude toward the ‘hard work principle’ in terms of heavy, energy-output type activities.

When the producers of The Motivation Factor, a documentary about the La Sierra System, interviewed those who had gone through it in their youth, they reported that the program had delivered on just this desired effect — and that it stayed with them into adulthood; when these La Sierra grads had experienced challenges in later years, they returned to their P.E. experiences as a touchstone — a reminder that they were capable of doing hard things.

Another unique trademark of the La Sierra System was its use of “ability grouping” — a hierarchy of ranks denoting different levels of physical proficiency. The boys were put in teams based on these levels, and each team/level was identified by different color satin trunks worn by its respective members (sans shirt) while they exercised. All freshmen started out on the White Team, wearing white shorts, and then could work their way up the ranks throughout their high school years. When you tested into the next level, you got to discard your old color shorts for new ones and proudly display your earned achievement. The color system was designed to harness boys’ natural propensity for competition and publicly-recognized status as a spur towards “physical excellence.”

One might be apt to wonder if this system didn’t shame and embarrass those boys who were at a lower level of fitness, and had to wear the lower-level shorts. Wouldn’t the color groups make them feel bad about having to broadcast their position at the bottom of the ladder?

A coach at the time, Richard Chester Tucker, who went on to write his PhD dissertation on La Sierra’s color system, looked into this very question. He compared the least physically capable third of students at both La Sierra and at a school that had a traditional P.E. program. What he found was that there was no difference between the self-esteem of the boys in each group. But, the boys at La Sierra were more physically fit than those at the other school; for example, on average, the lowest third of boys at La Sierra could do nine pull-ups, while the lowest third of boys in the traditional P.E. program could only do two. In other words, the color-coded shorts system didn’t make students feel bad about themselves, but it did inspire them to strive higher; maybe these kids weren’t ever going to be elite athletes, but the color-code system motivated them to become their best. As Tucker says in The Motivation Factor, “We came under a lot of criticism because [people said] ‘You’re making these kids walk around in white trunks. What does that do to their self-esteem?’ It makes them want to get red trunks!”

When interviewed as adults, those who went through the La Sierra program remembered it as being fun and highly supportive; the boys encouraged each other and helped each other reach the next tier.

Within the color system, there were four main levels: White (Beginner), Red (Intermediate), Blue (Advanced), and Navy Blue (Ultimate Athlete). Within the Blue level, there were two sub-levels: Purple and Gold. More than 90% of students were able to advance from the White Team to the Red Team by the end of their freshman year, and 60% were eventually able to make the Blue Team. For every 100 students, only one or two were still wearing white trunks by the time they graduated.

The following benchmarks had to be hit to move beyond the White Team and reach subsequent color levels within the La Sierra System.

Each color level had minimum, median, and “ceiling” sub-standards; the ceiling standard of one color level was the minimum standard of the next; hitting the ceiling standard within a color level advanced you the next color up. What is listed below is the minimum standard for each main color level:

Red (Intermediate)

• Pull-Ups: 10 
• Push-Ups: 32
• Bar-Dips: 12 
• Sit-Ups: 60 
• Standing Broad Jump: 6’9″ 
• 200-Yard Shuttle Run: 34 seconds 
• Rope Climb (18’, Stand Start): Use hands only (no feet)
• Agility Run: 20 seconds 
• 880-Yard Run: 3 minutes
• Mile Run: 7 minutes
• Man Lift and Carry: 880 yards
• Peg Board (Vertical): 6 holes
• 50-Yard Swim (Freestyle): 36 seconds

Blue (Advanced)

• Pull-Ups: 14 
• Push-Ups: 48
• Bar-Dips: 18 
• Standing Broad Jump: 7’3″
• Hanging Leg Lifts: 24 
• 300-Yard Shuttle Run: 52 seconds 
• Rope Climb (18’, Stand Start): 15 seconds, hands only 
• Agility Run: 19 seconds 
• 1320-Yard Run: 4:20 
• Man Lift and Carry: 1320 yards
• Peg Board (Vertical): 1 trip
• Extension Press-Up: 5
• 1.5-Mile Run: 10:30 
• 50-Yard Swim (Freestyle): 32 seconds

Navy Blue (Ultimate Athlete)

The median and ceiling sub-standards within the Blue level were categorized as their own colors: Purple and Gold. To test for the Navy Blue trunks, you first had to earn your Gold trunks.

• Pull-Ups: 34
• Bar-Dips: 52
• Handstand Push-Ups: 50
• Alt. 1 Arm Burpees (30 sec.): 26
• 300-Yard Shuttle Run: 47.5 seconds
• Rope Climb (20’, Hands Only, Sitting Start): 2 trips
• Agility Run: 17 seconds
• Extension Press-Up (8”): 100
• Pegboard (Vertical): 5 trips
• Handstand: 45 seconds
• Man Lift and Carry: 5 miles
• Mile Run: 5:15
• 5-Mile Jog: Finish
• Obstacle Course: Complete
• Swim (Front Prone Position): 1 mile
• Swim (Underwater): 50 yards
• Swim (Any Combination of Strokes): 2 miles
• Execute Front Hanging Float With Arms and Ankles Tied (Deep Water): 6 minutes
• Stay Afloat in Deep Water in Vertical Position (Use of Arms and Legs Permitted Within 8’ Circle): 2 hours

Representing the pinnacle of physical fitness, the Navy Blue shorts were obviously extremely difficult to earn, and as a result highly coveted. When a student earned his Navy trunks, his accomplishment was announced over the school’s PA system, and the entire student body would erupt into thunderous cheers. 

Between 1958 when the Navy Blue level was introduced and 1983 when La Sierra High School closed, only 21 students were able to achieve these trunks. Today, the standard remains as a testament to a time that had high expectations for its youth — that believed in their potential and pushed them to reach for as much of it as they could.  

Listen to this episode of the AoM podcast for more on the La Sierra P.E. program:

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It’s a new year, which means many of you are probably setting new fitness goals.

For a lot of guys, their goal is pretty vague — “get in shape” or “start running” or “get stronger” — and they’re not entirely sure how they’re going to get there beyond joining a gym.

This is a mistake.

Without a concrete plan, you just end up in the gym randomly stopping at machines to do a few reps before heading to the sauna.

Any exercise is better than no exercise, but it’s even better to work out in a way that gives you real results. When you observe that you’re getting bigger/faster/stronger, it feels dang good and serves as prime motivation to keep at it.

Deciding on which fitness program to follow comes with its own issues though. There are a lot of options out there, and they seem to increase at an exponential rate. Choosing one can be a confusing and overwhelming endeavor.

To help you decide on a plan to follow this year, below you’ll find descriptions of ten different programs I recommend. I’ve personally tried all but two of them, and I highlight the pros and cons of each to help you make a better decision.

The plan you ultimately choose will have to do with what your fitness goals are and what kind of exercise you enjoy the most. If you like to run, do a program that involves lots of running. If you like to lift weights, do a program that puts an emphasis on barbell training. If you like variety, do a program that regularly mixes it up. If you’re not yet entirely sure what forms of exercise you like best, I suggest experimenting with different programs (giving each at least three months) until you discover where your interests lie. That’s what I did in trying out all these different programs, until I finally found the fitness discipline that I truly love (Starting Strength-style barbell training). One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that when it comes to exercise, finding something that you actually enjoy doing goes a long way in ensuring that you’ll stick with a program.

And no matter which path you take, understand results only come with consistency. Show up to the gym each day and do the work. Regardless of whether or not you’re “in the mood.”

Here’s to a stronger and fitter year!

If you want to get stronger….

Starting Strength

If your goal is to get stronger in 2017, you can’t go wrong with Starting Strength. It’s a barbell-based strength program for novice lifters created by the incomparable Mark Rippetoe.

You do five barbell lifts: squat, deadlift, shoulder press, bench press, and power clean. With all the lifts (except for deadlift and power clean) you’ll be doing three sets of five. Each workout, you’ll be adding five or ten pounds to the barbell. You’ll work out three times a week.

Don’t let the word “novice” lead you to think that Starting Strength isn’t for you because you’ve been lifting for years. “Novice” refers to how long it takes for you to fully recover and adapt from workout to workout. A novice lifter is a lifter who can fully recover and adapt from a workout within 24-72 hours. What does it mean to fully recover and adapt? It means you can add more weight to your next workout without missing the number of prescribed reps. Basically, every workout is a PR day if you’re a novice lifter.

It takes about six to nine months of consistent training following Starting Strength before a novice lifter stops seeing gains at each workout. Once you’ve plateaued following Starting Strength’s novice, linear progression program, you’ll need to move to an intermediate program.

I started Starting Strength at the end of 2014 after doing weightlifting workouts as part of many of the other programs listed here, but being unhappy with the lack of strength progression I’d made with them. After starting SS, my gains have grown at a steady clip. I’ve since moved on from the novice programming, but I continue to work with Starting Strength Coach Matt Reynolds (check out my podcast with Matt) doing the same basic SS barbell lifts, just on an intermediate program.

Thanks to Starting Strength, I’m now squatting 420 pounds, shoulder pressing 200 pounds, and deadlifting 500 pounds. I should be hitting a new bench press PR of 300 pounds in the next two weeks (bench has always been my weakest lift). I’ve also discovered a passion for barbell training thanks to Starting Strength and I have plans to enter my first powerlifting competition this year.

You can follow Starting Strength on your own by buying the book and downloading their app.

However, I highly recommend signing up for Barbell Logic Online Coaching. Your online coach will keep you accountable to following the program and critique your form on your lifts from every workout with a video you submit to them online. This form critique is key. If you’re not doing the lifts correctly, you’re more likely to injure yourself and your progress will stall. What’s more, they’ll be able to adjust your programming as you advance from a novice lifter to intermediate, and intermediate to advanced. I’ve been doing Barbell Logic Online Coaching for over a year now and have been pleased as punch with the results. The service is top notch.

The downside of Starting Strength is that my aerobic conditioning has suffered. While you can incorporate things like prowler work and tire flips, aerobic conditioning isn’t a priority with the program. Starting Strength’s argument is that people should focus on getting strong first before focusing on aerobic conditioning, because aerobic conditioning is much easier to gain than strength. I’ll admit that I’ve skimped on the conditioning this past year and have suffered for it. When I participated in the Conquer the Gauntlet obstacle course race this past summer, I had to do a lot of walking because I was so gassed.  This year, however, I’ll be working with Matt to add more aerobic conditioning into my programming. Goal is to run an OCR without stopping for a breath like I had to last year.

StrongLifts 5×5

I did StrongLifts 5×5 way back in 2008 when I was looking to get back into barbell training after taking a hiatus after my high school football days. StrongLifts is similar to Starting Strength in that you do basic barbell lifts like the squat, shoulder press, bench press, and deadlift. Instead of the power clean, StrongLifts uses the barbell row as the fifth lift.

Like Starting Strength, StrongLifts is a linear progression program for novices in which you add a bit of weight (5 to 10 pounds) to each exercise every workout.

The barbell lifts are awesome, the program is simple and straightforward, and Mehdi at StrongLifts has a tremendous amount of free and useful content available on his site. The main issue I had with StrongLifts 5×5, however, was how much volume the workouts required. Instead of doing three sets of five (as SS recommends), StrongLifts has you doing five sets of five on all the lifts (except for deadlift, which is 1×5). I was completely worn out after a training session and recovery took a long time. I think the amount of volume required had something to do with how quickly I plateaued on the program. After a few months of following it, I stopped making progress, and I never got past 100 pounds on the press or over 300 on the squat. I’d do the requisite de-loading that the program prescribed to try to break through the plateaus, but still couldn’t. I ended up stopping out of frustration.

StrongLifts 5×5 has worked for other people, it just didn’t work for me after a certain point. I found Starting Strength’s 3×5 rep scheme to be just the right amount of volume to induce adaptation for strength gains without totally wiping me out.

Critical Bench

Critical Bench is a 10-week program geared towards increasing your bench press PR. I was following this program over three years ago. Workouts are divided into 5-day splits where each day focuses on a different body part. Mondays are your bench days and you’ll be incorporating negatives and lower/upper half reps to help increase the amount you can bench. The workouts on other days follow your typical bodybuilder, hypertrophy template (high volume, lower weight).

If you’re looking to increase your bench press, the program works. My 1 rep max went from 235 to 285 while following the program. The hypertrophy workouts combined with a low-carb diet definitely got me lean and jacked. I’ve probably looked my best in terms of aesthetics while following Critical Bench.

The downside is that while your bench press will definitely go up, you won’t see much in strength gains in other lifts like your squat, press, or deadlift.

Homemade Muscle

If you don’t want to join a gym or buy fitness equipment for your home, then consider Anthony Arvanitakis’ (check out my podcast with Anthony) bodyweight strength program Homemade Muscle. Unlike a lot of bodyweight routines that just have you doing higher and higher reps, Anthony programs similarly to what you might see in a barbell training program. He’ll have you modify the exercises to add intensity (the same thing as adding weight to a barbell), so that you can actually get stronger instead of merely increasing muscle endurance.

It’s a program that requires no equipment, no gym membership, and can be done anytime and anywhere. Can’t beat that!

While I haven’t followed Homemade Muscle for a long period of time, I use the program when I’m on vacation and away from barbells.

The downside of it and any other bodyweight-only program is that there’s a limit to the intensity you can add to the exercises. If you really want to up the intensity and get stronger, you’ll eventually need to add external weight.

If You Want to Become All-Around Fit…

Atomic Athlete

If you’re looking to achieve all-around fitness this year, you can’t go wrong with Atomic Athlete. Founded by Jake Saenz and Tod Moore (check out my podcast with them), Atomic Athlete’s goal is to make people who are “harder to kill.” Atomic’s main offering is their Hybrid Programming. It combines strength and aerobic conditioning in intense, hour-long workouts that you do five times a week. You’ll be doing squats, shoulder presses, bench presses, and various Olympic lifts along with bodyweight exercises like push-ups and pull-ups. For the conditioning portion, you’ll be doing a lot of sprints, sandbag work, kettlebells, and sled pushes.

While the Hybrid program looks a lot like CrossFit, it’s a lot less random and more programmed. The workouts are designed weeks in advance and structured into periodic cycles with specific goals in mind — there’s a real method to their madness. I followed the Atomic Athlete Hybrid program back in 2014 and saw excellent results with it. My conditioning was at its peak when I was following it, and I turned in my best performance at Conquer the Gauntlet.

Another benefit of the Atomic Athlete Hybrid program is the variety they build into it. It was always fun to see what we’d be working on with each new cycle. You definitely won’t get bored with it.

Besides the Hybrid program, Atomic Athlete also offers programs geared towards strength, endurance, and getting ready for military service.

The downside is that the workouts do require a bit of speciality equipment like sandbags, sleds, and kettlebells. Most gyms have them these days, but if yours doesn’t you’ll need to adjust the workouts (Atomic offers alternatives if you’re missing a piece of equipment). The workouts also absolutely smoke you, which is a pro or con depending on your taste, and tolerance for feeling beat during the day.

Garage Gym Athlete

Garage Gym Athlete is headed up by Jerred Moon (check out my podcast with Jerred).

Garage Gym Athlete is similar to Atomic Athlete in that the programming combines barbell strength training with aerobic conditioning. The difference is that Garage Gym Athlete, as the name implies, focuses on folks who are working out at home and might not have a lot of equipment.

The programming is top notch and easy to follow. At the end of each cycle, you’ll take benchmark tests to see how you’ve improved in various metrics.

I like how Jerred has focused on folks who are likely working out at home and by themselves (like I do). He provides plenty of content on how to acquire gym equipment on the cheap and even how to make it yourself, as well as how to stay motivated when you’re working out alone.

The downside with Garage Gym Athlete (and any program that’s trying to build both strength and conditioning at the same time, like Atomic Athlete) is that your strength gains will come more slowly compared to if you were just doing a straight strength training program (like Starting Strength). My personal recommendation if you’re just starting out would be to follow a strict strength training program for the first six months of the year and really go after those strength gains, and then move on to something like Garage Gym Athlete or Atomic Athlete.

Besides Garage Gym Athlete, Jerred also has a program called One Man One Barbell that provides an all-around strength and conditioning workout using just a barbell.

Mountain Tactical Institute

The Mountain Tactical Institute offers general, all-around fitness plans, but their main focus is on providing specialized programming that’s aimed at mountain and tactical athletes and designed around enhancing mission performance. MTI is heavy into mining the best research in order to offer periodized, carefully programmed plans not only for skiers, climbers, mountain guides, and alpinists of all kinds, but also to law enforcements officers, fire/rescue professionals, and those aiming to join the military and get selected for special forces.

I haven’t tried any of MTI’s programs, but am impressed with what they’re doing and think it’s worth checking out if you’ve got a job/mission in which you want to stay safe and perform at your peak.

Simple and Sinister Kettlebell Program

Just like the name says, this program is simple and sinister. Developed by Pavel Tsatsouline, the Simple and Sinister program will help get you get strong and aerobically conditioned all with just a single kettlebell. You train every day with two exercises, doing 5×10 one-arm swings per arm and 5×1 Turkish get-ups per arm with a 32kg kettlebell. Eventually, you’ll work your way up to 10×10 one-arm swings and 10×1 Turkish get-ups.

I did Simple and Sinister during a short period between Atomic Athlete and Starting Strength back in 2014. Really enjoyed this program because it was so easy to follow and it was satisfyingly hard. If you’re new to exercise and looking to get going with something that’s simple, straightforward, and requires minimal equipment and time, this program is for you.

Downside is that I did get bored with Simple and Sinister. But I’m not sure it’s really designed to be your sole workout program for life. More like an effective gateway drug to other things.

If You Want to Move Better…

MovNat

MovNat (Natural Movement) aims to help people reach their physical potential and make them functionally fit and proficient at performing the basic movements the human body was designed to do: walking, running, crawling, hanging, throwing, swimming, jumping, balancing, and so on. Once you learn the basics of different movements, you can start progressing into using those movements in more advanced ways — combining them together and trying them in different and more challenging environments — so that MovNat rightly considers itself “the martial arts of movement.” Sure, you can do a pull-up on the bar at the gym, but can you do one on a tree branch? You can lift a uniformly-shaped barbell, but could you hoist an oddly-shaped log? You can run a mile, but could you run barefoot over rocks?

MovNat isn’t really a fitness program to be followed on its own (though you could), but rather a form of training that can complement every other program out there. Kate and I worked with Aaron Baulch, a MovNat certified coach here in Tulsa, last year and attended a MovNat seminar in April. The training really added a lot to our main respective fitness disciplines; while it hasn’t replaced my barbell lifting, it has become a nice supplement to it. I now incorporate crawling and different ground movement sequences on my rest days. I found that they’ve really helped loosen up my body and increased my awareness of how it moves. I can now get up off the ground without using my hands which is something I couldn’t do a year ago. Feels good.

You can learn more about MovNat by visiting their website. Be sure to sign up for the email and you’ll get a free 30-page eBook with some basic movement sequences to get you started. Also be sure to listen to the podcast I did with MovNat founder Erwan Le Corre and its performance director, Danny Clark.

Kabuki Movement Systems

If you train with barbells and want to lift more efficiently and with fewer injuries, then check out Kabuki Movement Systems. It was created by world-record powerlifter Chris Duffin (check out my podcast with Chris) and is designed to help lifters become much more durable. Chris provides in-depth video breakdowns of the mechanics of each of the main barbell lifts, along with easy-to-follow cues to help you perform the lift more efficiently.

Moreover, you’ll find mobility routines that are designed to help you perform each lift better.

I’ve implemented many of the KMS lifting cues and mobility workouts into my own training and have seen immediate results from them.

If You Want to Run Faster and Injury-Free…

Strength Running

If you’ve got a goal to run in a 5K, an obstacle course race, or even a marathon, then you’ll want to check out Strength Running. USA Track & Field certified coach Jason Fitzgerald (check out my podcast with Jason) offers personalized plans to help you reach new PRs no matter the distance you aim to race. His programming includes not just running, but strength-building barbell and bodyweight exercises, as well as mobility work that will help you reach your goals  faster with far fewer injuries. Check out his PR Race Plan as well as his Team Strength Running for more details.

I haven’t personally followed Strength Running programming, as long-distance running just isn’t a fitness goal of mine. But I like Jason’s approach to the sport in that it’s programmed similar to barbell training (mixing volume and intensity), and that he puts an emphasis on strength training to help improve performance and reduce injuries.

Be sure to listen to our podcast on making exercise a sustainable habit:

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Back in 2013, I got an email from a French guy named Erwan Le Corre. He said he was the founder of something called Natural Movement (MovNat) and wanted to write an article for us about how to do things like lift and carry a log efficiently.

I had never heard of MovNat, so I Googled it and discovered that Erwan was teaching, refining, and systemizing a fitness program used by the ancient Greeks and Romans and revitalized in the 19th century by men like Georges Hebert with his book The Natural Method.

The philosophy behind MovNat is simple: humans intrinsically know how to physically move their bodies, and itch to do so in a wide variety of ways. But decades of fitness trends that have concentrated on counting calories, using machines, and exercising in indoor gyms, alongside an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, have left people overweight, injured, and “working out” in narrow, confined, artificial, and predictable ways. MovNat seeks to restore our knowledge of how to move naturally, and how to perform such movements in the most efficient and effective way possible.

MovNat aims to help people reach their physical potential and make them functionally fit and proficient at doing the basic movements the human body was designed to do: walking, running, crawling, hanging, throwing, swimming, jumping, balancing, and so on. MovNat is also all about getting outside and mixing up the environment in which you move. Sure, you can do a pull-up on the bar at the gym, but can you do one on a tree branch? You can lift a uniformly-shaped barbell, but could you hoist an oddly-shaped log? You can run a mile, but could you run barefoot over rocks? You might be strong, but are you tough?

The ultimate end goal of MovNat isn’t washboard abs, increasing the amount of weight you can lift, or leveling up the number of box jumps you can do for time (though it might indirectly help you with all those things). Rather, the motto of MovNat is “be strong to be useful.” MovNat doesn’t teach fitness as an end in and of itself; rather, you learn all these practical movements so that you’re always ready to help others, and even save a life, no matter the emergency or scenario.

Erwan lays all of this out in more detail in a couple of articles he ended up writing for us on the history of physical fitness and the principles of MovNat.

His pieces left me duly intrigued; a fitness philosophy based on the training of ancient warriors, exercising like a modern Tarzan, and serving others? Where could I sign up? Both Kate and I kept thinking about getting more into MovNat ourselves. And thinking about it. And thinking about it. We just kept putting it off. Adult-onset inertia problems are a real thing.

But we finally decided that 2016 was the year we’d become MovNat-ers. We contacted one of their head instructors about attending a MovNat workshop and he kindly invited us to come to one free of charge. And we did just that last month in Houston, TX. Below you’ll find my report.

Note: While we got in gratis, I’m not affiliated with MovNat nor was I paid to write this review. I just wanted to share my experience for those interested.

The Prelude: Training With Aaron

Marching with Indian clubs in my driveway with Aaron. A great alignment exercise.

Tulsa, OK usually isn’t on the forefront of trends — fitness or otherwise. I’ll see something cool going on in other cities, wonder why we don’t have that here, and then wait a few years for it to finally migrate its way inland. But in the case of MovNat, we’re fortunate to already have a Level 2 certified instructor here in town: Aaron Baulch, owner of Mindful Body Fitness.

Aaron has had an impressive and diverse fitness career. Back in the late 1990s, he was a bodybuilder competing in the super heavyweight division. But due to the stress and injuries he accumulated while sculpting his massive physique, Aaron retired and began exploring other fitness philosophies that could help him recover his health. He started off with yoga, which led to kettlebells, and his getting certified to be a coach in the Russian Kettlebell Challenge. Then he discovered parkour, which led him to MovNat.

While Aaron continues to teach MovNat, his main focus has shifted to “restorative movement” — helping older people who have a hard time simply getting around, as well as beat-up former athletes who struggle to be active without pain. He uses skills from MovNat, along with practice from other “movement schools” like yoga and the Katy Bowman system, to get people going again.

A few months before the MovNat workshop in Houston, Kate and I hired Aaron to come over to our place once a week for private sessions. Each Tuesday, Aaron would cover a few of the basic MovNat skills with us. What’s more, he created tailored restorative movement routines for both Kate and I to help with our respective fitness practices — running for Kate, barbell training for me. After several months of working with Aaron, we both felt well-prepared for the workshop, and I had worked out some kinks and tightness that had been holding up my lifting progress.

The MovNat Workshop

MovNat workshops, which are held around the country, take place over 2 days, typically on the weekends. They run from 9am-4pm on Saturday and Sunday, and overlap with Level 1 Certifications, for those who want to become certified MovNat trainers. The content of the weekend is pretty much the same for those who are just there for the workshop, and those who are getting certified, except that the latter start the workshop on Friday, and come earlier and leave later for the Sat/Sun sessions in order to take tests and get more instruction in how to coach others in MovNat.

Day 1: Learning The Skills

The workshop we attended was held at a place called Studio Fitness in Houston, TX. It’s a large facility that has an area dedicated just to parkour, MovNat, and CrossFit workouts. This is where Urban Movement, the parkour and MovNat-affiliate owned by Cameron Pratto, is headquartered.

Once we arrived, we met our coaches.

Now, with a program started by a French guy that’s all about moving naturally, and being in nature, you might expect it to attract a lot of Gaia-worshiping, granola crunchers who are looking to frolic in the woods. But with an emphasis on preparedness and toughness, a whole combatives program, and a wicked hard Level 3 certification (which includes stuff like jumping off a 7-ft platform and landing in a roll) MovNat’s leadership is actually filled with a lot of strong, virile dudes.

Not only is Aaron the most ripped yoga enthusiast I’ve ever met, our two coaches for the workshop have some really impressive fitness resumes. Cameron Pratto comes from a parkour background and even trained with the founders of the movement in France. Through parkour, Cameron discovered MovNat and instantly got hooked. He’s now part of the MovNat Certification Team and travels the world to train other instructors.

Our other coach, Danny Clark, co-owns a gym in Connecticut called Rebar Fitness along with his wife, Abby. Danny wrestled for the University of Virginia while in college and then later transitioned to Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA. He won the bronze medal for Team USA at the World Grappling Championships in Krakow, Poland in 2012. Danny is the Performance Director and Master Instructor at MovNat and is heading up the work on further systemizing the program.

Cameron offering instruction as Danny demonstrates.

Both Cameron and Danny were excellent coaches. (I think there’s typically one coach per workshop, but because Cameron had recently gotten into a motorcycle accident, Danny flew in to assist. Tough break for Cameron, but getting two top-notch coaches was a fortunate one for us!) They were able to convey the movements clearly to the entire class while also providing individualized one-on-one feedback when needed. They understand the movements and how the body works so well that they were able to use simple, easy-to-understand coaching “cues” to convey the needed corrections in a clear way.

After meeting the coaches, the workshop began with all the participants going around introducing themselves. There were about a dozen of us, and we hailed from a wide variety of backgrounds and fitness interests. A little over half were personal trainers seeking to get certified in MovNat, including a former collegiate swimmer and a professional tennis player. We also had a few physical therapists in the mix looking to get insights to help their clients. There was also a handful of average folks (like Kate and me) looking to improve their movement ability.

After the introductions, we got to work.

The first day of the workshop was dedicated to learning all the basic Level 1 MovNat skills: crawling, balancing, lifting, throwing, carrying, running, jumping, and hanging. Within each of these skills are smaller sub-skills. For example, with crawling you don’t only learn the basic crawl, but also the army crawl, crab crawl, back crawl. Any way you could crawl, we did it.

Crawling on my back, trying to maneuver under an obstacle.

But we didn’t start off moving like Paleolithic human-apes right off the bat. We began with breathing. Breathing? Well, come to find out, modern folks are terrible at breathing the way nature intended. Instead of breathing deeply from our belly, we breathe shallowly from our chest and neck. This sort of breathing induces the stress response and prevents our body and brain from getting the oxygen it needs to perform optimally. So we did some belly breathing. (Look for an article on this in the future.)

After re-leaning how to breathe, we started moving, and other than a lunch break, we didn’t stop moving until 4pm.

Balancing was my favorite skill we worked on that day. Jumping was fun too. We did broad jumps and learned how to jump down from high places safely and efficiently.

Kate taking flight as we jumped from weight plate to weight plate.

Hanging? Not so much. It’s hard work hanging your 215-lb body by your hands on a bar. But then that was Kate’s favorite skill. Different strokes for different folks.

The emphasis with all the skills was learning how to do them effectively and efficiently — not only how to get the job done, but how to get it done in the smoothest, least energy-intensive, most injury-minimizing way. Just because a movement is natural, doesn’t mean you’ve ever learned the best way to do it. Even though I already knew the basics of the movements because of my training with Aaron, I still found a bunch of ways to further refine my technique.

Busting out something called the tripod transition.

One of the things I liked best about these skill tutorials (and MovNat in general) is that the coaches always went over what the practical application was. Balancing, for instance, can come in handy for crossing a log over a stream when hiking; throwing is for when you’re working a sandbag line and pitching a load to the next guy; crawling is for maneuvering under a low obstacle, etc. The skills aren’t pursued just to get fitter, but to move more agilely in your day-to-day life, and be useful to others in a pinch.

The overall physical expenditure required by Saturday’s session was pretty constant, but light to moderate in intensity. Yet despite not lifting anything incredibly heavy or taking part in any vigorous cardio, by the evening, my body was sore in places I didn’t know existed. I was using muscles I hadn’t used in years. And it felt painfully good.

Day 2: Coaching Evaluations & Fun Time

The second day started off at 9am, and I was even sorer than I was the night before. The morning was spent reviewing the movement skills we learned on Saturday. This time, though, the coaches mixed things up and added some fun by incorporating variations and games. For example, with balancing, rather than just walking forwards and backwards on 2X4s, we had to traverse them while holding sand bags and medicine balls, and stepping over barriers.

Kate intently balances while holding a sandbag and stepping over barriers.

Most of the rest of the day was spent on Cameron and Danny doing coaching evaluations of the participants who were getting certified. The way this worked is that we broke into two groups, and each cert candidate took a turn practicing coaching the rest of the group on one of the MovNat skills. Cameron or Danny would then ask everyone in the group for their feedback on how he or she did. This time was definitely more about the cert candidates than the workshop participants, and it was less engaging to have less experienced coaches review concepts we had gone over the day before. A little repetition and practice is good though, and I didn’t mind it too much. However, Kate, who by nature has a restless disposition and likes to always be moving, found it a little slow and wished the time had been spent more actively.

Danny demonstrates a vault.

Fortunately, the day ended with working on a skill we both found to be the weekend’s most fun: vaulting. You know — parkour stuff. While we focused on the very basics, I had a blast doing it. I felt like I was taking part in a real-life Assassin’s Creed, minus jumping into carts of hay.

Sunday’s session came to a close with a roundtable discussion, led by Cameron, about general lifestyle habits that we can use in addition to MovNat to help create a healthy and active life. It was basic stuff — sleep better, manage stress, spend time outside — and I’m not sure it was necessary.

With that, our MovNat workshop was over, and it was time to head back to T-town, OK.

My Verdict on the MovNat Workshop Specifically, and MovNat Generally

MovNat will be hanging around my fitness routine.

If you’ve ever heard of MovNat and wondered what it was all about, or if you just feel like your fitness routine and philosophy (you do have a fitness philosophy, right?) is lacking in some way, I really recommend attending a MovNat workshop.

On the con side, it is pretty pricey ($420 for the weekend), and it would be nice if they gave folks the option of just doing one day, instead of having to buy the package of two. Saturday is definitely the most educational and engaging of the two days.

But on the pro side, you get 14 solid hours of quality small group coaching, and a chance to jump into MovNat feet first. You don’t have to have done any MovNat training before you attend a workshop, though it can beneficial; you’re going over a ton of skills in a relatively short amount of time, so having a contextual foundation already will allow you to hit the ground running and get more out of each tutorial. But you could go without any background in MovNat, have a good time, learn a ton, and walk out knowing how to move your body a lot more effectively and efficiently. Plus, if you attend the workshop in your hometown, it provides a chance to get to know some folks in the MovNat community and learn how to get more involved.

So whether, you run, barbell train, or do BJJ, check out a MovNat workshop when/if there’s one in your neck of the woods. You’ll learn a lot, meet great people, and have a lot of fun.

If there isn’t a workshop near you, then I’d recommend getting involved with MovNat in other ways. Search to see if there’s a MovNat-related gym and/or trainer in your area. You can also visit MovNat.com to learn the basic movements as well as sign up for MODs or “Movements of the Day” that you can do on your own.

Regardless of what sports or fitness disciplines you’re into, MovNat can be an asset and support to what you’re already doing.

As I mentioned above, MovNat has been a fantastic supplement to my strength training. I’ve struggled for years with tightness in my shoulders and chest that has made it hard to get under the bar properly for a low-bar squat. The tightness has come from spending too much time hunched over a computer. Crawling and hanging regularly, along with some other restorative movements, have helped open those areas up and I can now get the bar in its proper place with less difficulty. Practicing movement exercise has also helped my shoulder, and in my bench press.

Another problem area that MovNat has helped with is in the squat itself. My hip flexors and abductors are super tight — again, caused by years of sitting. Despite doing warm-up sets before my work sets, I usually can’t get down to depth until my second one. My strength coach, Matt Reynolds, always gives me a hard time about that. There are a few movement patterns in MovNat, like lateral sit, that have helped me open up those areas. I get in that position when I’m playing with the kids on the floor or when I’m watching TV. Along with some other restorative movements, my flexibility in those areas has improved significantly and I can get down to depth much easier now.

The biggest contribution MovNat has made me to my life is simply making me more intentional about moving throughout the day. Our bodies are made to move. When you stay seated in the same position for hours a day, week in and week out, it wreaks havoc on your body. Most of the health issues modern Westerns face today don’t stem from over-exertion, but under-exertion. Your metabolism slows to a standstill and tightness forms to compensate for your poor body positioning and movement. The changes happen so slowly that you don’t even realize what your lack of movement is doing to you. That is, until you find yourself breathless while roughhousing with your kids and you tweak your lower back when you stoop to pick up a 50-pound load of mulch while doing yard work.

Now that I’m in my 30s, I’m especially cognizant of the need to stay active and nimble in the decades to come, and know my ability to do that depends on what I do now from day to day.

Since starting with MovNat and especially after the workshop, I find myself looking to take what Aaron calls “movement snacks” throughout the day. After sitting for 30 minutes, I’ll get down on the floor and do some lateral sits and some short back and forth crawling. When I’m talking on the phone, I’ll get up and walk around and maybe even lower myself down into a full squat. When I pass the pull-up bar in my garage, I’ll hang from it for a few seconds.

It’s also brought more “play” into my life. After doing MovNat for a few months, I see my world differently. That curb over there? I could do some balancing on it. Those big rocks? I could jump on top of them and broad jump across them.

MovNat has had the same effect on our kids. As 5- and 2-year-olds respectively, Gus (who’s been taking his own MovNat lessons) and Scout (who’s picked up on it from watching the rest of the family), already move around a lot anyways, but since practicing MovNat has become part of our family culture, they look for opportunities to do it even more — climbing and balancing on whatever they see and talking about the cool “MovNat” they’re doing. They don’t think it’s a workout; they’re just having fun. But in the process of playing MovNat, they’re developing a love of fitness and physical activity that will hopefully last a lifetime.

If my review of MovNat has piqued your interest, well, you’re in luck. We plan on delving into more of its principles in the coming months and years. Stay tuned.

And get moving!

Be sure to listen to my interview with Erwan all about MovNat and the natural method: 

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It all started with an email:

Hi Brett-

We have an event coming up that I would like to personally invite you to called the Vanguard. This is essentially 36 hours of learning all of the man skills your daddy never taught you or you may have forgotten over the years.

– Tod

I clicked on the link he included that gave the rundown on the event: Animal butchering. Pistol shooting. Tactical medicine. Knife combatives. Rope skills.

I had to go.

So I flew down to Austin, Texas to spend a weekend with members from the Atomic Athlete gym at an event they called the Vanguard.

Below I share a report of the experience. While Tod waived my entrance fee, I paid my own travel costs and he didn’t ask me to do a write-up. I wanted to do so on my own accord, for reasons I’ll discuss in the conclusion.

36 Hours of Man Skills

Founded by Tod Moore and Jake Saenz, Atomic Athlete is a gym located in Austin, Texas. Their mission is to make their athletes “Stronger, Faster, and Harder to Kill,” and they accomplish this through CrossFit-style workouts. They’d be quick to point out, though, that while their workouts are similar to those of CrossFit, they’ve created their own unique program.

Atomic Athlete decided to put on an event to give its members an experience related to its mission, outside the usual focus on physical fitness. 2014 was the inaugural year for the Vanguard, and the event was held at Reveille Peak in Texas Hill Country, just an hour outside of Austin. It started on a Friday night and lasted until Sunday morning.

Forty-five people were in attendance, about 90% of which were dudes. The atmosphere was very casual and relaxed – much like a weekend camping trip with friends. Everybody slept in tents they had brought and set up themselves, and except for an awesome feast on the last night, the food was typical camping food — oatmeal for breakfast and a MRE for lunch on Saturday. There was also plenty of beer and soda for the nightly pow-wows around the bonfire.

After we all set up our tents on Friday evening, instruction began right away with land navigation. The rest of the weekend had a quick pace; the only time we weren’t learning or actively engaged in something was when we were standing around the bonfire at night or sleeping.

Here’s what was covered over the course of the weekend:

Land Navigation

Plotting points on our topographic map for the land nav course.

The first night we had a hands-on class on land navigation using a topographic map, compass, and protractor. I figured I’d be an old pro at this because I had spent an entire morning at the ITS Tactical Muster a few weeks earlier shooting azimuths and counting paces. But when we had to start plotting points on our map, I realized that I had forgotten quite a bit, so it was nice to get a refresher and a humbling reminder that these types of skills degrade quickly if you don’t practice them.

Animal Butchering

Brandon Willin from Tandem Farm Co. demonstrating how to harvest a rabbit.

This session was the one I was looking forward to the most. I’ve never butchered an animal and then eaten it, but it’s been something I’ve wanted to learn how to do because, well, you never know when you could use a skill like that. Plus, I think it’s a shame that most modern folks (me included) are completely detached from where their meat comes from.

Learning how to to clean a rabbit for eating.

Brandon Willin from Tandem Farm Co. taught the class on animal butchering. He brought several rabbits and chickens from his farm so that each team could harvest, clean, and butcher their own animals.

Brandon spent a good deal of time talking about the importance of humanely harvesting any animal you plan on eating and ensuring that you only butcher healthy animals to avoid getting sick yourself.

Plucking a chicken.

He then went right into the demo on harvesting and butchering a rabbit and chicken before giving each team their own animals to practice on. As a suburbanite who had only eaten the kind of meat that comes neatly wrapped in plastic, I thought I would be a bit squeamish about killing and taking the guts out of an animal. But it was surprisingly natural. Didn’t feel weird or gross at all.

Brandon put our harvested rabbit and chicken meat in coolers when we were done and used it to create a giant feast for us all that night.

Knife and Gun Self-Defense

Tim demonstrating defense from a knife attack

This was another session I was looking forward to. I was surprised to learn when I arrived at the Vanguard that the knife combatives session would be taught by Tim Kennedy, a Green Beret sniper and #7 UFC midweight fighter. Tim ran us through the different types of knives one could use for self-defense as well as what you should do if someone ever pulls a knife on you. We then used dummy knives and practiced disarming knife attacks.

Tim also brought some dummy guns and went over some basics on what to do if someone pulls a gun on you at close distance, after which we were able to practice on each other.

Me practicing disarming an attacker who draws a gun on you in close quarters.

This was an eye-opening session for me. My practice partner had a dummy knife while I held a dummy gun, and we started off 15 yards apart with our weapons concealed. We then did our best to create as much of a real-life knife attack scenario as possible. My partner would approach me slowly, calling me names, making verbal threats, etc. When he closed about half the original distance between us, he’d pull out the knife and start rushing to stab me. I figured it would be super easy to get off a pretend shot before he got to me, but I’ll be darned if it didn’t turn out to be more difficult than I thought.

I died several times of knife wounds.

And this was in a situation where I knew what was coming! I can’t imagine how much harder it would be in an actual knife attack where you don’t know it’s coming and adrenaline is pumping through your veins. The class taught me that in a close-quarter lethal encounter, your gun shouldn’t be the first thing you go to. Maybe Sean Connery got it backwards: don’t bring a gun to a knife fight.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for Self-Defense

Donald Park demonstrating some BJJ for self-defense. He’s a top notch instructor and BJJ practitioner- Pan American Champion, Gracie Worlds Open Weight Champion, and Gracie Nationals Champion. He has an AB in Economics from Princeton and in MBA in finance from the University of Chicago to boot. Brains and brawn.

Donald Park, a champion Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter and a head instructor at Gracie Humaita in Austin, taught a session on using BJJ principles in a self-defense capacity. We practiced holds, mounts, and guards.

Tactical Medicine

Justin Hurzeler demonstrating how to use a tourniquet.

Justin Hurzeler, an EMT-P field paramedic and training officer for Williamson County Emergency Medical Services, taught a class on tactical medicine. We learned how to use a tourniquet, how to create splints and treat broken bones, and practiced plugging knife and gun wounds using a big ol’ slab of pork as a stand-in for injured flesh.

Learning how to treat a bullet wound on a piece of pork.

Obstacle Course

The ranch we were staying at had a giant obstacle course. I’ve done several courses in my day and you usually see the same sort of obstacles. This one, however, had ones I’ve never seen before. They were pretty hard, but I was able to get through them all…except the last one.

The point at which my arms felt like they were about to fall off…

It was a rope across a big pond. You could either traverse the rope using a ranger crawl, which puts you on top of the rope, or a monkey crawl, which puts you on the bottom. I went with the monkey crawl because it’s supposed to be the easier of the two.

Things started out great. I thought I was making good progress, but then the proverbial battery acid started filling my veins. I figured I had to be close to the other side. Nope. I was halfway. I clung on with every bit of strength I had left, gritting my teeth in hopes of making it over with my dignity intact. My grip finally gave out just a few feet from the other side.

…. and there goes my manly pride. We will meet again rope over a pond!

Well, at least it taught me that I need to work on my grip strength – which I’ve been doing with my Captains of Crush!

Pistol Training

Jake Saenz doing some pistol coaching.

Tod and Jake (who is a former Army Special Operations Soldier), along with their friend Cal Reed, owner of Coyote Run Tactical, led a class on pistol shooting. They started off with the safety rundown and basics, and then shifted into dynamic move and shoot drills. We’d run 50 yards — pistol holstered, of course — and then make two hits on a steel target. Getting your heart pumping like that definitely makes accurate shots a bit more difficult.

The next morning Jake and Tod took those of us who didn’t have to hurry home back to the range for some more shooting. Jake did some “ball and dummy” drills with me, where he’d load my magazine with a combination of live and dummy rounds. The purpose of the drill is to reveal whether you’re anticipating recoil and jerking the trigger. If you’re practicing good trigger control, your gun should remain perfectly still when you get to the dummy round; if you’re not, you’ll see yourself jerking the gun. I, of course, had some serious jerkage going on. Ball and dummy drills are going to become a regular part of my pistol training now.

Rappelling

Besides the awesome obstacle course, Reveille Peak also has a giant rappelling tower. Atomic Athlete member Koby Crooks, lifetime climber and owner of outdoor equipment shop Alpine Cowboy, taught a class on the basics of rappelling. Justin Hurzeler — the tactical medicine expert — is also trained in tactical rappel and helicopter fast-roping, so he showed us some cool rappelling skills that you’d see in the likes of Call of Duty. Rapelling is something I hadn’t done in a long time so it was great to get the refresher.

Wrap-Up

On Saturday night we had a giant feast made from all the animals we had harvested in the morning. Brandon from Tandem Farm Co. made us rabbit stew, roasted chicken, and mashed potatoes. The food was fantastic. It was the first time I had eaten rabbit, and it was delicious! We all chowed on the meat we harvested while sharing war stories from the weekend.

Big thanks to Brandon and his wife for cooking the great grub while we were out having fun rappelling and shooting guns.

All in all, the Vanguard was an awesome experience and I had a great time.

Concluding Thoughts: Strengthen Your Tribe

Because I had just attended the ITS Tactical Muster a few weeks before the Vanguard, I was in an interesting position to compare and contrast two events with similar missions but different set-ups. I honestly can’t say that one was “better” than the other. Both were great; they were just different.

I learned (or re-learned) many skills at Vanguard that I had learned at the Muster, but each respective event also had unique classes. The Muster was five days long; the Vanguard was just 36 hours. Because it was shorter the Vanguard was cheaper — $300 vs. $900. The Muster was attended by guys from all over the country; the Vanguard was almost entirely made up of members of the Atomic Athlete gym.

The Muster is structured, tightly-run, and well organized. Its founder, Bryan Black, and his wife spend all year planning it. This makes for an awesome, incredibly immersive experience for the attendees, but putting something together like the Muster is not something anyone can do – it has to be an integral part of your business.

For that reason, I think there’s some virtue in the Vanguard’s approach. After I shared my report of the Muster, I heard from a lot of guys who said things like, “This is so cool – I want to start something similar where I live.” While executing something like the Muster would be difficult if not impossible to accomplish if it’s not your main focus, creating something like the Vanguard is really doable. Tod and company put the event together in only a few months and kept it pretty loose and casual.

And that’s actually really why I wanted to highlight the Vanguard here on AoM. As someone who thinks the world needs less networks and more communities, I’d love to see more gyms and other groups start holding these kinds of events. Obviously the chance to learn new skills and become more useful and competent is invaluable (and we were able to learn quite a bit in just 36 hours!), but the chance for bonding is just as important.

While the Muster creates awesome camaraderie amongst the men who attend each year, after it’s over the guys go back to their homes around the country. The advantage of something like the Vanguard is that it’s an outgrowth of a group that’s already physically rooted in a place. That’s where community thrives.

Folks these days need help taking their acquaintances outside the walls of the gym or work or church in order to forge real friendships. An event like the Vanguard is a great way to do this. Almost everyone there was a member of Atomic Athlete. These were folks who were already buddies, and the weekend gave them a chance to deepen their bond over shared ideals. Thus, an event like the Vanguard is an excellent way to build something modern men really need – a tribe.

So the big takeaway I got from my weekend was that with just a bit of initiative and some planning, other men could do something like this in their own neck of the woods, with their own tribe. It doesn’t even have to be an outgrowth of a gym or church, although that would work well. You can also simply look to your circle of friends and see what sort of skills you all possess. Maybe one of you knows first aid, maybe another has some expertise in combatives.

Commit to a weekend where you all get together for some camping and teach each other these skills. That’s what Tod and Jake did. All of the instructors were friends and members of the Atomic Athlete gym who volunteered their time to teach their fellow tribe members.

If none of your friends have expertise in a skill you want to learn, then have everyone pitch in some money and hire someone in your area who does have that skill to come out and teach you.

It doesn’t have to be perfect or highly regimented. Keep it relaxed and fun. You just have to take action.

Really. It’s that simple.

________

Big thanks to Tod and Jake and the rest of the Atomic Athlete crew for letting me share the experience with them. If you’re looking for a new fitness program this year, I highly recommend the Atomic Athlete’s online programming. I did it for the last three months and the workouts smoked me.

All photos copyright of White Blaze Media (Brian Flannery- who also happens to be a solid dude)

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I’m a big fan of the website ITS Tactical. The founder and owner Bryan Black has done an awesome job of creating interesting content about tactical and survival skills that avoids the “tin foil hat” vibe that many other survival and tactical sites give off. He makes his content approachable and extremely applicable to the Average Joe. We’ve featured ITS Tactical on the site from time to time, and we’ve even had a few posts inspired by them. ITS has played a big part in me getting interested in that kind of stuff.

But here’s the conundrum that I found myself with in regards to my newfound interest in tactical and wilderness survival blogs/books: I just read their how-tos and never actually got out there and tried my hand at them. Or, I had learned some of these skills in my Boy Scout days, but I hadn’t practiced them in years. My interest then remained at the abstract level; if I had to actually start a fire without matches or navigate with a compass I wasn’t sure I’d do all that well because I hadn’t practiced these skills in a hands-on way.

Why didn’t I take action? Oh, I’ve had the usual excuses — that with family, work, church responsibilities, etc. I just didn’t have the time. Even when I had some free time that I could have used to practice my compass or knot-tying skills, I didn’t. Why? Well, it’s easier to decide to surf the net than to go practice fire-making. And I also felt that with some skills, I really needed an expert looking over my shoulder to see if I was doing it right, rather than simply unwittingly compounding my own mistakes.

Luckily, in the past several years, a few hands-on “man skill” camps have cropped up. Bryan started one three years ago called the ITS Tactical Muster. And a brand new one was created this year by Tod Moore from Atomic Athlete called the Vanguard. Both Bryan and Tod invited me out to their events this year, and I saw them as a kick in the rear that would force me to try the things I’ve been reading about for the past few years. So I decided to go to both events and check them out. The Muster was last month. As you read this today, I’m at the Vanguard. I’ll be reviewing both events here on the site. First up: the Muster.

The ITS Tactical Muster is a five-day event in which participants congregate in the woods of Texas to learn and practice wilderness, self-defense, and first aid skills. It’s like Boy Scout camp, but for grown men (women are welcome too, but mostly guys come). Below I offer a report of the experience. While Bryan did waive my entrance fee, he did not ask me to write a review, did not pay me to write a review, and I don’t have any affiliation with ITS other than being a fan. So my thoughts are entirely my own!

The Type of Guy Who Goes to Muster and My Squad Introduction

My squad, Charlie Squad

I drove down to Dallas in a rented Ford Fiesta (economy class baby!). On my drive down there I wondered what type of people would be in attendance. I’ll admit I was worried it was going to be a bunch of Navy SEAL wannabes or crazy prepper-types, and that I might not fit in. But when I arrived at the Scout ranch and started doing the initial meet and greet, I discovered my worries were ill-founded (and overly cynical). Bushy beards abounded, but these were all normal, down-to-earth dudes from a wide variety of  backgrounds who just happened to have an interest in developing tactical and survival skills. Amongst our group of 31 men (and one gal), there was a jeweler, a few lawyers, bankers, several first responders, and an ER surgeon. About a quarter of the guys were active duty military and veterans. The participants had come from across the country, and about 90% had attended the Muster in previous years.

What I found striking (and encouraging!) was how all of them seemed to have had the same reason for coming: they wanted to be useful and competent men for their families and communities, no matter the situation. Muster was a way for them to learn and refine those skills that they might one day need to call upon in an emergency. I have to credit Bryan Black for creating a culture on ITS Tactical that draws men like this to an event like Muster.

Cadres Nick and Brian.

With my worries allayed that I’d be spending the next five days with potential stars of Doomsday Preppers, I learned that the 32 people in attendance would be divided into four teams (or squads) of eight and that the squads would be competing against each other throughout the week. The winning squad would go home with the coveted paddle trophy. I had the fortune of being assigned to Charlie Squad. All the men in Charlie Squad had been teamed up with each other in previous Musters, as Bryan tries to keep Squads intact from year to year. The guys on my team were all super adept and knowledgeable in a wide variety of skills. What’s more, they were fired-up to win this year’s Muster after a break-down during the previous year’s final competition. Despite being the new guy, the men of Charlie Squad immediately brought me into their circle of camaraderie. Throughout the week, we ate together, slept in the same bunk, and hung out during what little free time we had. Because we had to work together to succeed in our tasks and tests, we became quick friends. They became my honor group for the week, and they pushed me to push myself for the good of the team. I hadn’t experienced that sort of what I would call “male aggressive nurturing” in awhile. It was refreshing. Reminded me of my football days.

The coveted Paddle Trophies.

We began and ended each day with a flag ceremony.

Food and Accommodations

This year’s Muster was at Sid Richardson’s Boy Scout Ranch in Bridgeport, TX, about an hour west of Dallas. The ranch is huge and sits on the shoreline of Bridgeport Lake. Each team had an air conditioned bunkhouse and shared clean bathrooms with hot showers with the bunkhouse next to them. So, we weren’t exactly roughing it, but I’m not complaining.

Charlie Squad chowing down. I made myself a sausage, egg, and hashbrown biscuit sandwich. I used the gravy sort of like ketchup. I’m about to eat the crap out of it. It was good.

The grub was provided by the Scout ranch and consisted of your typical Boy Scout Camp fare: sloppy joes, breakfast burritos, biscuits and gravy, fajitas, etc. I thought the food was awesome, but I have a garbage gut and a palate as sophisticated as a raccoon. I’ll eat just about anything you put in front of me and you’ll be my friend forever. So I’m probably not the best judge on the quality of the food.

So overall, I thought the food and accommodations were great! I think ITS Tactical has just scratched the surface on the things they could do at Sid Richardson. Hopefully they can use the facility again next year.

Skills Learned

The team at ITS Tactical jammed about eight days worth of training into five. As soon as we arrived at the Scout ranch on Thursday afternoon, the instruction began. Throughout all of our training sessions very little time was spent lecturing from a PowerPoint presentation. We learned by doing. Below I highlight the skills we learned during the Muster:

How to Fold a Topographic Map

This was surprisingly useful. Topographic maps can be unwieldy because they can be pretty dang big. Bryan showed us how to fold a map so that it’s easy to manage and gives you quick access to different “quadrants” on your map.

How to Make and Use Ranger Beads

This was completely new to me. You use Ranger beads to keep track of how far you’ve traveled using a pace count. It’s a pretty nifty little tool that came in real handy during our land navigation exercises.

We had to count off how many paces it took us to travel 100m. We used that pace count to figure out distance traveled during land navigation using our Ranger beads.

How to Pick Locks, Bypass Consumer Security Devices, and Break Into Cheap-O Handgun Safes

I won’t lie. Lock picking was the thing I was most looking forward to learning at the Muster.

This session was taught by Matt Fiddler of SEREPick and was one of the most useful and eye-opening things I learned during the Muster. It blew my mind how easy it is to pick a lock or bypass certain home security devices. I learned that many of the things we think keep us and our property safe and secure are simply illusions of security. You can’t just rely on a lock or security alarm to keep you and your family safe. You need to add multiple layers and utilize other tools and tactics to really achieve greater security (something we’ll cover in the future).

How to Make a Fire With Flint and Steel

The fire building contest required us to build a fire high enough to burn through three strings. The top one was made of Kevlar. That took the longest to burn through.

A nice refresher on a skill that I had developed a long time ago, but had let deteriorate. Brian Green of Brian’s Backpacking Blog provided the instruction. After a quick demonstration, we had a friendly little competition amongst the squads to see who could build the biggest fire, the fastest.

How to Navigate With a Compass and Map

Plotting points on my map for the land nav exercise.

This is something I learned in Boy Scouts but had long forgotten, so it was nice to get the refresher. Classroom time was spent learning how to plot points on a topographic map, shooting azimuths, and figuring out bearings. Again, instruction time was kept to a minimum and our instructor, ITS Tactical writer and former Navy SEAL, Nick, got us outside navigating as much as possible. I sort of felt like a wizard being able to pinpoint stakes in the ground with nothing but a map and compass. It was really empowering. If, for whatever reason, GPS stops working during the Zombie Apocalypse I’d feel confident about finding my way to a safe hide-out.

After lock picking, land navigation was my favorite skill we worked on at the Muster.

Signaling

Learning and using different types of signal flares.

Bryan provided a great session on various ways and tools to signal for help or to identify meet-up locations. I was introduced to the awesome world of infrared signaling devices. I now want night vision goggles. Who wants to buy them for me?

How to Track Humans

John Hurth leads a class on a hands-on tracking exercise.

John Hurth, retired Army Ranger and owner of Tyr Group, provided a hands-on class on how to track humans in the wild. This was another eye-opening exercise. It’s amazing what you can decipher about a person, what he’s doing, and where he’s going simply by paying close attention to footprints, litter, and damage to the environment. We spent a few hours in the “track” — a dirt pit in which he made footprint examples — where John showed us what to look for in a footprint in order to determine if a guy is running, limping, or walking backwards. If Gus ever wanders off in the greenbelt behind our house, I’ll have some idea of how to track him down.

We spent a lot of time in the dirt track looking at and analyzing footprints.

Ropes Course

The “Leap of Faith” was pretty dang exhilarating.

On Saturday we spent most of the day doing a ropes, or confidence, course. Lots of great team-building and comfort zone-expanding. The best thing was the “Leap of Faith” where you had to jump out from a 20-foot telephone pole about six feet to grab a suspended ring. It’s a lot more difficult than it looks!

Wilderness First Aid

Caleb Causey of Lone Star Medics provided a class on wilderness first-aid. We learned how to evaluate an injured person, create various splints for arms and legs, how to clean out a wound, and how to use a tourniquet.

We used chickens to practice cleaning wounds.

Foot Care

Brian Green did a short class on foot care. It’s not a “sexy” topic, but when you’re out in the wild, hiking for hours at a time, taking proper care of your dogs is essential. Key takeaway: cotton is rotten and keep your socks dry.

Escape from Illegal Restraint

I’m using a Kevlar string to saw my way through zip ties.

Bryan Black led a session on how to escape from illegal restraints, specifically how to escape from zip ties. I’d done the “just bust the zip tie open” method before. Using a piece of Kevlar string to saw your way through the plastic was new to me.

I’m showing a fellow Squad member how to use the chicken wing technique to escape from zip ties. He finally got it!

Patrolling

There wasn’t a set class dedicated to this skill-set, but we learned how to patrol and communicate quietly during formation. This skill came in handy during our final training exercise.

Putting Our Knowledge to the Test: Scenario Oriented Training Exercises

Bryan Black prepares his team for the night op observation point mission.

Throughout the five days of the Muster, we started to pick up on a subtle storyline that we were unknowingly part of. My fellow Muster attendees and I would soon discover that the skills we were learning would be used in two live-action, all-night “missions” or training exercises that involved this storyline.

The first operation was an all-night reconnaissance mission that required us to navigate to and hide ourselves at an observation point. From there we gathered info that we’d need to succeed in completing the final training exercise. We took turns sleeping in watches on the bare ground, and I got about two hours of sleep. That was a long night.

On the final night, we took part in the last training exercise, or FTX. The storyline that had been developing throughout the weekend all came to an action-packed climax during the FTX. We had to use all the skills we learned during the previous four days to successfully complete it. The squad that performed the best during the FTX would walk home with the coveted paddle trophy.

I’m not going to go into detail about the storyline and what all happened during the FTX because 1) it would ruin the fun for future Muster attendees and 2) Bryan asked that we don’t share details about it.

But I will say this: even though I knew this stuff was all pretend, I had a freaking blast!

I felt like a little kid again playing army with my neighborhood friends, except this time I was actually using practical skills while I was “playing.” Being able to test myself in a simulated environment was incredibly useful in reinforcing what I had learned during the previous four days.

The Recap Ceremony

Charlie Squad with our FTX Paddles. Booyah!

Monday morning was really low key. Ate breakfast, cleaned up our bunks, and then went to the classroom for a recap. Our cadres gave some final words of encouragement and Bryan gave everyone a chance to share what they liked and didn’t like about the event. The vast majority of the feedback was positive and the constructive feedback was noted by the ITS Team to consider for next year. This time was basically a chance for everyone to bond over war stories and share funny moments or moments of growth from the event.

Awards were handed out and then the winner of the FTX was announced. And I’m proud to say that Charlie Squad went home with the Paddles. Mine is hanging in my closet/podcast studio now.

Final Thoughts

The Muster was a great time. I got to learn (or re-learn) some awesome skills, and I experienced some great male camaraderie. Bryan, his wife Kelly, and the whole ITS Tactical team of instructors did one heck of a job putting on a well-organized, well-thought out event. What’s more, Bryan and the instructors did a bang-up job of keeping the vibe positive and constructive. I left the event feeling more competent and empowered, and I was motivated to keep practicing the things that I had learned. I’ll be writing up posts on some of the skills I learned from time to time (this month: lock picking!).

It might be easy to roll one’s eyes at the idea of a bunch of grown man playing commando at a boy scout camp, but it really didn’t feel weird or silly at all. While such an event could be cheesy and overdone, it was kept very straightforward and down to earth. And while I don’t know if I’ll ever need to use the skills I learned, it feels awesome knowing I could if I had to, and they’re just plain fun to try. ITS Tactical has really created a good thing here.

From what I gathered, the Muster has evolved over time and has gotten better each year. I think there is even more Bryan can do to make the experience even more immersive. One suggestion I made during a feedback session was to provide “homework” to attendees on basic skills they needed to master before they come to the Muster so that time can be spent going more in-depth in a particular area.

One downside, at least to me, is that the Muster is five days long, and doesn’t end until Monday mid-day. If you’re like me with a crazy busy schedule, getting away for that length of time can be difficult. While the length of the Muster increases the amount of skills you can learn and the camaraderie, I would have preferred it to be just a bit shorter, ending on Sunday, so I could get back and be ready to hit the ground running on Monday morning.

The price ain’t cheap either: $900. But considering that you get 5 days of lodgings, 3 meals a day, and personal instruction, it’s pretty reasonable. It’s about what a week of summer camp goes for, which is pretty much what it is. If you’re interested in attending, watch the ITS site for an announcement in the coming months as to how to register for the 2015 Muster. You have to already be a paid member of their site to register, and spots are always limited.

Overall, I’d definitely recommend folks who are interested in learning or refining their man skills to attend a Muster. It’s a fantastic way to learn cool stuff, spend time outside, and experience some great, manly camaraderie.

All photos copyright of ITS Tactical. 

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Editors note: What happens when a crusty Vermonter, who stays in shape by splitting wood and whose idea of fun is hanging out in a primitive shack in the woods, tries one of the most popular events in the exploding obstacle race movement? James “Uncle Buzz” Surwilo filed this report.

Tough Mudder calls itself “probably the toughest event on the planet.” But after participating in a Tough Mudder event myself, I would substitute “hardly” for the rather odd qualifier “probably.”

To the uninitiated, a Tough Mudder event – mind you, event, not competition – is a one-day obstacle course which is, in their words, “designed to test your all-around strength, stamina, teamwork, and mental grit.” Events are team-oriented, and held the world over; the Tough Mudder that I took part in was held right here in Vermont.

Tough Enough?

I was vaguely aware, before, of Tough Mudder, Spartan Races, and the spate of other “obstacle” races that seem to be growing in popularity these days, but I never considered joining in. That all changed at my extended family’s Easter celebration this year. As we gorged on artery-clogging Polish fare and tipped back a few beers, Cousin Andrew recounted his and Cousin Casey’s entering — and finishing — a Tough Mudder event the previous year. A number of eyebrows went up in the room, including mine, as Andrew is not, umm, exactly lean and mean, as I would have thought a Tough Mudder finisher ought to be. By and by, after another beer, and a plate of kielbasa and pirogi later, it comes out that 97-pound Casey dragged Andrew by the heels, sobbing and expended, over the last few miles of the course.

Andrew was very excited about entering a larger-than-two contingent in the New England Tough Mudder, and began to implore family members to join in. He was going around the room, seemingly asking anyone ambulatory to sign up. Except me. “Great Aunt Sophie, I’m sure walkers are allowed, are you game?” “Little Stanley, you’ll be out of diapers in a few months, I’ll sign you up.” That may be an exaggeration, but I was definitely harkened back to being the last kid picked for middle school gym class basketball, only worse, this time I wasn’t even picked.

So I stewed on this perceived slight for a few weeks as the far-flung Team Surwilo came together: Andrew and Casey from New Jersey, Cousin Allison from Connecticut, and my son Doug from Vermont. All 20- and 30-somethings. Should I assume that a fogy from the older generation of cousins simply wasn’t wanted to, literally, anchor the team? Did they think that I’d show up at Tough Mudder in my 70s tube socks, with ringer T- shirt tucked into high-waisted gym shorts? Should I just grovel and ask to join the team? I decided to utilize Doug as an intermediary, and asked him to float the hint that his creaky ol’ man would be interested in joining Team Surwilo, if the others would have him. Well, the word came back that I was welcome to participate, that any initial exclusion was merely an oversight. Yeah, sure.

Signing Up . . . To Be Nickeled and Dimed

Because I wasn’t at all sure that I was going to take part, I hadn’t learned of the whole Tough Mudder culture. I didn’t understand the ethos, and didn’t realize what I was getting into. That all changed when I went on the website to register for the event. I fully admit to being naïve and quixotic – and if I was ever to forget, my kids would gladly remind me – but I was a little taken aback by the, um, swaggering bravado of the Tough Mudder message, with an abundance of black and red, and fire, and skulls and crossbones, and rugged, utilitarian fonts. If I don’t finish, do I have to walk the plank at sword point? But I guess when you are an entity enticing a demographic to run a seemingly grueling obstacle course, this is the correct marketing technique. And throw in some references to beer, tattoos, and rock ‘n’ roll, and a pretty wide net into the American public is cast.

Well, heck, I could appreciate this promotional tack. A Tough Mudder event should be billed as a challenge, and fun, and a chance to build esprit de corps, where sissies need not bother, and if you sign up, you’d better start seriously training or your lifeless body will be found hung up on barbed wire, a scant half-mile into the course. What I couldn’t appreciate, though, was the steep $150 entrance fee. True, had our team gotten its act together sooner, or should I say had I been invited to join the team sooner, the price would have been slightly less, but the peculiar escalating fee structure was the first clue as to the profit-focused nature of Tough Mudder. The second was the mandatory $15 insurance fee tacked onto the cost of registration. Call me nitpicky, but why separate out the insurance fee? If you are going to hose me, hose me for $165, lump sum, don’t nickel and dime me.

But Tough Mudder relentlessly trumpets its “proud support” of the Wounded Warrior Project, a non-profit organization providing assistance programs and services for injured service members. A terrific idea, and if a goodly chunk of my $165 registration fee went to help this deserving organization, I’d be all for it. The truth of it is, when you drill down through the propaganda, the Tough Mudder participant, if he or she raises an additional $150 for the Wounded Warrior Project, will – get this – be bestowed a $25 refund by the Tough Mudder organization on their immoderate registration fee. In other words, none of the well over $1,000,000 collected in registration fees for this Tough Mudder New England alone went towards helping the injured service members. All of the money donated to WWP comes, as a supplement, from the kindness and pockets of participants, not from the Tough Mudder organization.

Further, I was dismayed to discover that Tough Mudder has the audacity to attempt to charge spectators $40 to watch an amorphous horde of weekend warriors tramp up and down some ski slopes. “Bring the spouse, bring the kiddies, bring your work buddies, but just make sure that they come with a pocket full of cash.” What hubris! You can watch the Boston or New York Marathons – which include world class athletes — for free. In fact, you can view any road race in the country – many of which actually give all their net proceeds to charity – for free. $40 a head for the privilege of watching a Tough Mudder? You’ve got to be kidding. Well, if you don’t want to be clipped for spectating, you could always volunteer at the event, which the website implored. Hmm, Tough Mudder is raking in some very serious money, and yet is asking for unpaid assistants to perform menial labor in order to pad the bottom line. Am I missing something here?

But wait, the attempted shakedown isn’t over yet, as I read on. “So you, Mr. or Ms. Participant, after driving to Mount Snow, want to park your car for the event? Well, that will cost you another ten spot.” Never mind that it’s a ski area accustomed to big crowds and with acres of parking, it seems as if Tough Mudder can find a way to turn a buck, they will.

And last, but not least in annoyance, was the $3 charge if you wanted to check your bag of clean, dry clothes for changing into after the event. In full disclosure, out of the goodness of their collective hearts, Tough Mudder states that it will give half of the bag check proceeds to the Wounded Warrior Project. That’s right, a whole $1.50 donated for each bag checked. Kind of tugs at the heartstrings, doesn’t it?

Preparing for the Big Event

The Tough Mudder website presents much in the way of training recommendations to prepare for the big day; instructions geared specifically towards one’s fitness level at the time of Tough Mudder commitment, from 97-pound weakling to Olympic decathlon champion. But like most advice that I’m offered – especially if it differs from my preconceived notions – I ignored it. Chest presses, curls, burpees, Bulgarian split squats, mountain climbers…yeah, yeah, and yeah. Besides, I’m 55 years old with bad feet and a build like Olive Oyl, and I don’t have multiple hours spent each day idling on the couch that I could turn into a one-month transformational fitness regime. I’d have to take on Tough Mudder physically as is, and hope for the best. For mental preparation, I repeated to myself so often that it became a mantra: “If Andrew can finish, so can I.” And I was heartened to know that my son’s training routine consisted of occasionally tooling up and down a flat, waterfront bike path at a pace calculated more to admire the female scenery than to build endurance. If I was going to stagger off course and collapse in the weeds from exhaustion, I’d have good company.

So the big Tough Mudder weekend arrived. As luck would have it, Allison’s dad, Cousin Eddie, has a funky old farmhouse in Wardsboro, about 10 miles from the Tough Mudder venue. The idea was for participants and our entourage to congregate there on Friday, spend the night, and be ready to go for our 8 a.m. Saturday start time. We all were disciplined on Friday night, ordering veggies on the pizza, keeping alcohol consumption to reasonable quantities, and getting to bed at least before midnight.

The Morning of the . . . Race?

Saturday morning dawned sunny and cool, with a forecast for continued sunshine all day and temperatures in the low 70s. Perfect for a masochistic outdoor adventure. Andrew and Casey, our Tough Mudder veterans, offered us newbies helpful last minute information, such as that we should have started hydrating the week before, that not all of the tangle of dangling electrical wires that we’ll run through are actually energized, and relatively few people have died on the course. Great! They also admonished me for my pre-event breakfast choice of a couple of Pop Tarts and three cups of coffee, themselves preferring instead tasteless energy bars, too-healthy bananas, and these advanced science, performance-enhancing cubes which I think are just reshaped gummy bears.

The five of us comprising Team Surwilo donned our matching shirts and piled into Cousin Eddie’s truck for the chauffeured ride to Mount Snow and the Tough Mudder starting line. Since the organizers, in my estimation, anyway, want to extract the maximum amount of money from each registrant, including parking fees, vehicles that are simply dropping off passengers are stopped about a half-mile from the check-in point. “Are you sure that you don’t want to pay to park, it’s pretty far to walk…” We walked, but the carload of family members that came to watch shelled out the $10. Dang, that pained me!

The Mount Snow base area was alive with the energy of thousands of amped-up Tough Mudder entrants, and the adrenaline was even seeping through my curmudgeonly veins. Once through the check-in line, Tough Mudder requests that a teammate write your entry number in indelible ink across your forehead, not for post-mortem documentation, but for recognition in photos that Tough Mudder will hawk to you afterwards. This isn’t made explicit, so the forehead display takes on the role of badge of honor, elevating the participants from the rabble of spectators and hangers on. I declined the ink. Firstly, I had no desire to obtain a photo of myself and, secondly, the numbers creeped me out, leaving an impression that was somewhere between a price tag and a convict’s identification.

A lot of teams, like Team Surwilo, came outfitted with custom shirts, and the shirts ran the gamut of styles and colors. As might be imagined, the more buff the body, the more prominent the tattoos, and the more serious the team, the tighter and skimpier the attire. Team Surwilo, on the other hand, opted for belly-flattering, unisex black T-shirts, sized spaciously, although we did include a kind of badass skull and crossbones logo on the breast. No doubt this seriously intimidated our competitors as we swaggered to the starting line.

Tough Mudder staged groups of several hundred, I’d guess, for starting at 20-minute staggered increments. Those teams with an identical starting time would move uphill and away from the frenzy of the base area, wait at the beginning of the course in the shade of the first obstacle: a solid, wooden, eight-foot wall. On the other side of the wall an animated and amplified Tough Mudder staffer gave the previous group instructions and pointers, fed them Tough Mudder propaganda, had the group sing the National Anthem, recite some cornball pledges, and chant banal inspirational slogans. We were only separated by a 50-foot-wide wooden wall, so could hear everything. The histrionics were a bit over the top. What, was I storming the beaches of Normandy, winning one for the Gipper, or just paying dearly for the privilege of running up and down some ski slopes with 8,000 other bored Americans?

So the horn or whistle or whatever the signal was went off, and Team Surwilo, gathered close to the wall, collectively scaled the formidable barrier, taking turns boosting each other over, or sacrificing our bodies to cushion a teammate’s free fall on the other side. Even though no one is being timed, with hundreds of adrenaline-fueled entrants waiting their turn, scrambling over the wall becomes a frenzy, with far too many bodies in far too small a space. Mount Snow is falling to the Commies, and on the other side of the barricade is the last helicopter flying out, and I’m getting on! Well, I scrambled up and over the wall without dangling helplessly from the top with my shorts stuck on a loose board or anything, so, so far so good.

Having conquered our first obstacle, we all were supposed to collectively stop, congregate, and listen to the Tough Mudder shill run through his canned spiel on patriotism, safety, indemnification, a pitch for licensed Tough Mudder apparel, and practice our secret handshake…as if we hadn’t just been subjected to this hooey, verbatim, five minutes and 50’ removed. Andrew, my man, suggested that we just keep going and join the stragglers of the previous group as they receded down the ski trail. Bringing up the rear would be a position we’d know well.

So off Team Surwilo went on our big adventure, ready for whatever nature or the Tough Mudder organizers could throw at us. This bowie-knife-between-the-teeth, bandoliers-crisscrossed-over-our-bare-chests attitude lasted, oh, about five minutes until we concurrently lost our first wind, and became enmeshed in the sea of humanity that, I’d come to find out, was intrinsic to Tough Mudder New England. The large but individual groups that started the event at predetermined increments quickly blended together, the faster teams moving up through the pack, the slower teams, like us, falling behind. But, in essence, the Tough Mudder became a 12-mile-long undulating snake of people.

Anyone who has entered a running race or any long distance endurance competition knows of the pre-race jitters and the pent up nervous energy to burn. You just want to GO. But once out on the course, after a few hundred strides, or strokes, or revolutions, you find your pace, remember that you’ve put one foot in front of the other, or dipped oars in the water, or pedaled a bike countless times. When that happens, when the initial thrill and spectacle of the start is over, the intensity wanes, and the surroundings become noticeably quieter. It can feel a little anticlimactic, and the reality of the arduous trek ahead begins to sink in. Tough Mudder was no different. Within five minutes of the start, I was run-walking elbow-to-elbow with hundreds of other of my panting brethren, trying to convince myself that this was fun, and hoping I could last to the finish line.

The obstacles were, admittedly, kind of cool, especially the first baptism of mud. One minute we were all virginally clean, the next minute, dirty brown from head to toe. Like a car wash running backward. For most of the obstacles, neither athleticism, grace, experience, nor cunning was advantageous. They were, in fact, put there to get you muddy, or muddy again, or muddy once again. Doug and I began to call the obstacles “diversions,” as they became welcome respites from otherwise artless tromping up and down ski trails. A few of the obstacles took upper body strength, such as crossing over a water body on monkey bars, or hauling yourself over vertical walls, and a few involved electric shocks or ice cubed water, which took more nerve than muscle, but for the most part, they were about fording mud in every way, shape, and form.

From the initial wall climb, the freneticism of the participants in overcoming the obstacles never abated. Everyone would be plodding along at whatever speed was comfortable for the individual or team, until an obstacle approached and then you’d think that eternal salvation awaited on the other side – but only for one more person. Gang way! If I was crawling through a half water-filled culvert I could be assured that my head would be inches from the person’s flaying feet ahead of me, just as I knew that there was someone right behind, implicitly pushing me along. Jeez, back off, I’ve just about got my head between this woman’s knees! Everyone got caught up in the silly “need for speed,” irrespective of time being irrelevant. You just didn’t want to be like the grandpa doing 50 in the passing lane, holding up a line of cars.

The thing of it was, if you didn’t want to attempt an obstacle, you simply went around it and continued on your merry way. No note from a doctor needed, no event marshal there to tongue lash, no sitting for 15 minutes in the penalty box, no writing “I am a wussy” 100 times on a chalkboard. No consequences. The fact that a participant didn’t even have to try to overcome an obstacle seemed incongruous with the bravado spirit of Tough Mudder.

At any given time, I had no idea where on the ski area I was; whether the Tough Mudder course was a series of loop-de-loops, or a sine wave, or as random as a three-year-old’s scribble. I was a red blood cell in an artery, just going with the flow. So it would come as a complete and amusing surprise on several occasions to come within earshot of the starting line and hear the Tough Mudder pitchman egging on the next-to-go group. Assuming it was the same guy, give him credit, like a department store Santa, for he could feign excitement dozens of times per day. Even by the early afternoon, from what I could tell, the exhortation was as irritating and facile as it was at 8 a.m.

If it hasn’t been made clear, Team Surwilo set a, let’s say, leisurely, pace. We were certainly overtaken by more people than we passed. The faster members of our team would forge ahead, and wait for the others at the top of some hill or at the next obstacle, then run down the hill or tackle the obstacle, and start the process over. This strategy worked well, and we kept together and shared the camaraderie of the experience. Only near the end, when Allison’s asthma began to take its toll on her stamina did we split into two groups. Doug, Casey, and Andrew forged ahead so as not to get cold waiting and risk muscle cramps, as even at 70^o, being wet in a breeze can be chilly.

The final Tough Mudder obstacle was placed where all the previous finishers (of which at that point there were plenty) and spectators could watch the fun. It was a sprint through a channel of – guess? – calf deep mud, with an occasional deeper, hidden hole, and scattered hay bales to navigate around. Probably five persons wide and 40 feet long. Above the channel hundreds of wires dangled, placed densely and long enough to be unavoidable. Based on my “get me out of here” semblance of a sprint through, yes, many wires weren’t electrified, but I wasn’t going to go back around and test that hypothesis. The live wires smarted, and beer waited.

Reviewing the Experience

So Allison and I finished, got our free beer (only one, lest Tough Mudder’s profit margin shrinks by 50 cents), each collected our T-shirt and headband (which I soon and not regrettably lost), and were reunited with the earlier Team Surwilo finishers and our families. Five of us started, five of us finished without serious injuries or medical issues. Our performance then, on that basis, was equal to any other team, and better than some.

I’m not sure what I expected from Tough Mudder; no experience is what you think it’s going to be: better, or worse, or simply different. I was surprised and disappointed by the mercenary nature of the event. I ignorantly thought otherwise, but Tough Mudder is a for-profit business and, like any business, seeks to maximize revenues and minimize expenses. They want, for instance, as many entrants as possible, so the course can’t be too tough or competitive, or no one but the hardcores will enter again. And the numerous fees and relentless sales tactics turned me off. I’m just not someone who’s particularly motivated by money, and this apparent focus of the organizers tainted the experience.

I don’t doubt that we were among the slower teams on the course, so I can’t say I was disappointed to not see how we fared against others. But even during the event itself, knowing that we would finish but that it didn’t matter when, an impression of pointlessness to the endeavor began to develop. Does it matter if I skip this obstacle? Nope. Does it matter if I sit in the sun on top of the ski lift enjoying the view for a few minutes? Nope. Knowing that something is regulated and timed lends an event some extra excitement, and thus the motivation to really exert yourself. The Tough Mudder claims to eschew timing in favor of an emphasis on camaraderie, and that simply finishing is challenge enough. But jettisoning timing chips also saves money, and as aforementioned, making it to the end of the course is really not all that difficult. Absent the thrill of competition, this kind of event loses much of its draw, at least to me.

Was Tough Mudder physically demanding? I felt surprisingly fresh at the finish, and never felt otherwise later that night or the next day. Honestly, I’ve been more spent after a brisk day hike up and down one of Vermont’s highest mountains, but undoubtedly had I pushed myself I would be telling a different story. Twelve miles of steep ups and downs at speed is demanding, and I tip my hat to those participants who kept running all the way from beginning to end.

Was Tough Mudder fun? Worthwhile? The best part about the Tough Mudder was . . . everything else about the weekend. Our extended family came together from hundreds of miles away, and we spent quality time together as we normally never do. These are people that I grew up with, and a younger generation, and now even a third generation. From sharing meals, telling stories around the campfire, and, yes, romping through mud, I got a sense for the Surwilos that I see, all too briefly, once a year at best. And I’ll treasure that my son Doug, who is out forging his own life, was my Tough Mudder teammate, and we ran miles side by side. Who knows when that opportunity will come again?

So while I’m not the target demographic of these kinds of events, I can understand their appeal. If your aim is to spend a Saturday with your friends or family, doing something fun and out-of-the-ordinary outside, rather than engaging in a true test of your strength, stamina, and mental grit, you’ll likely have a good time. It’s certainly better than spending your Saturday on the couch, watching other men perform athletic feats on television.

Would I personally participate in Tough Mudder again? I don’t think so; done that and the character of the event goes too much against my nature. Would I go to watch if Team Surwilo enters again? Maybe, but I sure ain’t going to pay!

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It all started with an email from Andy at Huckberry. They were doing an offer that week with a company called GORUCK. Andy wanted to introduce me to Jason, its founder.

I’d read about GORUCK before, and knew they had a really cool story. Jason had served in the Army as a Green Beret and wanted to offer civilians the same type of rugged backpack that he used during his military service. Jason started the GORUCK Challenge as a way to field test his packs in a memorable and convincing way, but they became so popular that they took on a life of their own.

The Challenge is a 9-13 hour team event in which a Special Forces veteran — called a Cadre — leads you on a 15-20 mile “guided tour” of your city. It begins at night and runs until the morning. Along the way, you take part in military-inspired challenges and “missions,” which includes doing some basic training calisthenics, taking a little swim, carrying logs (and each other), and a lot of marching. Oh, and you do it all while wearing a backpack filled with 30 to 40 pounds of bricks and other equipment. They tell you to bring $20 for a taxi – if you can’t go on, you have to call one to pick you up. The GORUCK Challenge is designed to push the individual physically and mentally and build teamwork and camaraderie among those participating. It isn’t a race. You don’t get a medal for first prize. The goal of the Challenge is to finish it, and finish it as a team. “Good livin’” is what Jason calls the whole experience: “when life is actually tough but you love it, your attitude is great, and you smile.”

Sounds…interesting, right? So when Jason invited me to take part in a Challenge, I accepted. It was partly out of curiosity and partly because I wanted something to push me in becoming a better man.

I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.

Full disclosure: Jason waived the fee for my entry into the Challenge, but I bought the backpack myself, and he didn’t even so much as hint that he’d like me to do a review. I just wanted to write this up for those who are curious, and to encourage readers to do it, as I think it’s worthwhile.

How I Trained for the GORUCK Challenge

As soon as I said yes, I started to fanatically research the Challenge: What’s it like? How should I train? What should I bring? Will I survive?

I quickly discovered that details about the Challenge are hard to come by. The folks at GORUCK keep a pretty tight lid on what the Challenges entail. They don’t even let you know the start point of your Challenge until the day before the event. The surprise and intrigue are all part of the fun of the GORUCK Challenge. Members of the GORUCK family — individuals who have successfully completed a Challenge — play along with the clandestine vibe and keep blog posts about their experience pretty vague.

The guys at GORUCK say you really don’t need to train for it and that if you’re in pretty decent shape, you’ll get through it just fine. They argue that the Challenge is more mental than physical. Also, because every Challenge is different, it’s hard to know exactly what to train for.

After completing the Challenge, I have to agree with them. I trained for a GORUCK Challenge that was entirely different than the one I actually experienced. Based on my research of previous Challenges, I thought there was going to be lots of Indian Runs and city blocks-worth of walking lunges and bear crawls. My challenge had a few bear crawls at the beginning, but no walking lunges or Indian Runs at all. Dang. Honestly, I probably could have completed the Challenge just fine without my special GORUCK training program.

That isn’t to say that my intensive training went to waste. The drills I concocted for myself pushed my body and mind further than they had gone in a long time, and I’m now in the best shape of my life. The conditioning definitely mentally steeled me to complete the grueling 9-hour challenge. I don’t regret one bit of the hours and sweat I put into getting ready for it.

If you’re interested in training for the GORUCK Challenge, below I provide my weekly workout routine as an example. As mentioned above, I thought there would be lots of windsprints, bear crawls, and lunges during the challenge, so I designed my conditioning routine around those exercises.

I also took 15-minute ice baths after my most intense workouts. They served a few purposes: 1) you typically get dunked in cold water at the beginning of a challenge. I wanted to be ready for that, 2) the ice baths aided in recovery, and 3) they were part of an experiment I was doing on naturally increasing my testosterone (the results on that in the new year).

Brett’s GORUCK Training Program

I started this training program back in August. For the first three weeks, I did the running and the lunges/bear crawls without the fully loaded GORUCK GR1. After that, I completed all my conditioning workouts while wearing the brick-filled rucksack. However your train for the GORUCK, I definitely recommend spending time getting used to carrying that thing around.

Monday: 5×5 Stronglifts Weightlifting Routine

Tuesday: 50- x 40-yard windsprints with loaded GORUCK pack (1-minute rest between each sprint). 15-minute ice bath after workout

Wednesday: 5×5 Stronglifts Weightlifting Routine

Thursday: 5K run with loaded GORUCK pack + 300-yard 75-pound sandbag carry. 15-minute ice bath after workout.

Friday: Alternated between 720-yard bear crawls and 720-yard walking lunges with loaded GORUCK pack. 15-minute ice bath after workout.

GORUCK Challenge Class #335, Oklahoma City. November 24, 2012.

After months of training, the night of the Challenge arrived. I double-checked my gear, kissed Kate and Gus good-bye, and drove down to OKC to pick up my brother. The starting point of our Challenge was in front of the downtown baseball stadium. We arrived shortly before 10PM to find 15 other people standing around in front of a statue of Mickey Mantle, nervously waiting for our cadre to arrive.

Our GORUCK class had a great mix of folks from all walks of life. Military veterans and current servicemen, police officers, and just regular old civilians. Our team of 17 even had two hardy gals.

Showing our bricks to our Cadre, Beaux.

Around 10:15, our cadre, Beaux, rolled up. Beaux is a Force Recon Marine with multiple deployments in Iraq. He now works as a Special Ops trainer for the Navy and leads GORUCK challenges on the weekends for fun. He’s a badass. Beaux did a roll call, asked to see our load of bricks, and then established the ground rules. He informed us that he has his PhD in pain, suffering, and discontent, and that we’d be matriculating through the school of pain and suffering that evening. After the “pleasantries,” we started our 9 hours of Good Livin’.

I could go into detail about the Challenge, but I won’t. I don’t want to ruin the experience for folks wanting to sign-up, and there’s something special about keeping only the GORUCK family in the know about what goes on. It’s much like a fraternity.

With that said, I’ll briefly describe what Cadre Beaux dished out to GORUCK Class #335.

The Welcome Party

The evening started off with lots of push-ups, flutter kicks, and rolling around on the ground.

The evening began with Basic Training, or what Beaux called “The Welcome Party.” We did push-ups, flutter kicks, bear crawls, and rolled around on the ground, all while wearing our fully-loaded packs. The worst exercise was the Human Centipede. Our team of 17 people laid down in a line on the ground and we had to put our feet on the shoulders of the man behind us and put our face as far up the rear-end of the person in front as we could. We proceeded to do push-ups and crawl around like inchworms on the ground in this position.

The point of Basic Training isn’t simply to do difficult calisthenics. It’s actually an introductory lesson on the importance of teamwork in the GORUCK Challenge. It took us all a bit to figure that out, but as soon as we did, training became a lot easier.

After pounding us physically and mentally for about an hour and half, Beaux told us to go dunk ourselves in a freezing cold pond nearby. Getting into the water wasn’t that bad; I was used to hanging out in cold water with my ice baths. Getting out was a different story. It was 34 degrees that night and really windy. Needless to say, we were all uncomfortable and a bit miserable for the rest of the night.

Fighting Zombies

Me helping with a log carry.

Beaux had crafted a series of missions for us that night that followed a Zombie Apocalypse storyline. Every mission had a time limit. If we didn’t complete it in time we were punished with “Fist Pumping,” which involved pressing heavy objects above our head while Beaux blasted music from his SpongeBob SquarePants speakers.

Old Glory waved proudly the entire night.

My brother and I shooting zombies. I think we killed them all.

We had to do “Fist Pumps” as a punishment whenever we didn’t finish a mission in time. “Fist Pumping” was code for “lift heavy stuff over your head over and over again.”

The missions involved lots of low crawling and carrying giant logs on our shoulders. The hardest part of the Challenge for me was buddy-carrying our teammates two miles to “medical help” after they had been “bitten by zombies.” My back and legs were smoked after that.

“Embrace the suck.” Darn right.

My brother Larry and his beard.

The buddy carry segment of the Challenge was perhaps the toughest part of the night.

These guys from Blue Line Tactical Fitness wore gas masks the entire Challenge. It was part of an effort to raise money for the Oklahoma Fallen Officer Foundation.

Teamwork was emphasized throughout. You had to do everything as a team. We marched as a team, were punished as a team, and lifted heavy crap as a team.

Our Challenge ended at about 7:30AM. Not a single member of Class #335 dropped out during the night. We started as a team and we finished as a team.

Beaux presenting our patches at the OKC Bombing Memorial.

Individuals who successfully complete a GORUCK Challenge are awarded a GORUCK Tough patch for their bag. Beaux led us to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial for the presentation of patches. For those of us from the OKC area, that place holds a lot of meaning. I had several school friends lose parents in the terrorist blast that killed 162 people. But the community rallied together to support the families of victims and rebuild. Beaux gave a solemn and inspiring speech about the values and mission of the GORUCK Challenge and what it means to be an American — it was to encourage that same sort of camaraderie and teamwork that the community of OKC demonstrated in the aftermath of the bombing.

My GORUCK Tough patch

Beaux presented us our patches one-by-one, shook our hands, and welcomed us to the GORUCK Family.

And with that, my four-month journey to the GORUCK Challenge was over.

GORUCK Challenge Class #335

Final Thoughts and Why You Should Do a GORUCK Challenge, Too

For the next week I was sore as all get out. My shoulders and back were scraped and bruised, but I saw them as badges of honor. All in all, I found the GORUCK Challenge to be a tremendously satisfying experience.

While I was training for it, some people asked me why I would want to do something like this. Looking at it from the outside, things like the GORUCK Challenge, and obstacle and adventure races of all sorts, can indeed seem kind of silly. Sure, it’s easy to think, “Gee, isn’t it sad that society has become so devoid of challenge that people have to pay money to stay up all night carrying around a rucksack full of bricks?” Maybe. But the alternative is doing…nothing. And being an armchair critic. The reality of living in the modern age is that there are no longer things built in to the culture that force us to push ourselves – we have to actively seek out these experiences ourselves. The fact that there were a good number of former and current military guys in my class shows that everyone is looking for, craving really, an extra layer of challenge in their lives. Every man should be regularly stretching both his physical and mental capabilities. We may not be under zombie attack (yet), but every man should know that he’s ready for anything, and feel confident in the knowledge that he’ll be able to perform when his limits are pushed.

I see guys all the time who settle down in the suburbs, have a kid, grow a gut, and spend their nights watching Netflix. Soft suburban dads. I’ve decided I won’t let this to happen to me. And I’ve found it’s important to have goals to train for — things to motivate myself to stay physically active and mentally sharp. That, to me, is the value of doing something like the GORUCK Challenge. I bet you’d find it worthwhile too.

Good Livin’ gentlemen.

 PS: Things have come full circle. Huckberry is once again offering a super deal on the GORUCK Challenge. If you buy a GORUCK rucksack, you get free entry into a Challenge. Pretty dang sweet. As Huckberry puts it, “This gift is sort of like combining a Christmas present and New Year’s resolution into one, and in the best/worst possible way. No pain, no gain.”

Thanks to Ryan Long from Blue Line Tactical and his friend George for providing the pictures of the event. 

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The market is saturated with materials on exercise and fitness. Books, magazines, and videos all promise that they have the newest and most effective workouts that will turn you from a chump to a champ. Unfortunately, most of the stuff is crap and it makes your life more complicated than it needs to be.

Thankfully, there is a site dedicated to promoting a no frills workout that produces results. StrongLifts.com is authored by a guy named Mehdi from Belgium.

Every week, Mehdi offers great advice on strength training, nutrition, and motivation. However, the core of StrongLifts.com is the StrongLifts 5×5 workout. The routine consists of simple exercises that are designed to increase your strength, increase your muscle, and reduce your body fat.

Why every man should use the StrongLifts 5×5 Workout

1. You don’t need much equipment for the StrongLifts workout. Just a gym that has some barbells, plates, a bench, a power rack (for squats), and pull up and dip bars. That’s it. No machines, no girly rubber balls, and no elastic cables.

2. Moreover, the exercises themselves are simple. You’re doing basic strength training lifts like the squat, bench press, and deadlift. You won’t be doing any complicated or awkward moves. Just the tried and true exercises that have been proven to work for decades. And the set and reps formula is elementary: 5X5=5 sets of 5 reps each.

3. Each workout works your whole body and consists of compound exercises that hit multiple muscles at the same time. This is the best and most efficient way to lift weights. Many men’s magazines show you exercises designed to isolate a specific muscle. This is inefficient and a waste of time. The more muscles you activate in a workout, the stronger you will get and the more fat you will burn.

4. You get results. The workout is designed so you can push yourself and get stronger and leaner each week. Each workout out you’ll be adding a small amount of weight. Before you know it, you’ll be bench pressing cars over your head. Because strength training increases muscles and muscle burns more fat, you’ll also get leaner. After a couple of months with this workout and a proper diet, you can kiss your belly and man boobs goodbye.

My Results Using the StrongLifts 5×5

To give you an idea how effective the workout is, here are my results after doing the StrongLifts 5×5 for four weeks:

• My body weight has stayed the same (190 lbs), but my body fat percentage has gone down 4%
• I’ve increased my bench press 5×5: 155 lbs to 5×5: 190 lbs. An increase of 35 lbs.
• I’ve increased my squat from 5×5: 190 lbs to 5×5: 245 lbs. An increase of 55 lbs.
• I’ve gone from being able to do 1 stinking pull-up to being able to do 6.

The last time I was putting up weight like this was seven years ago when I played high school football. The way things are going now, I’m confident I can surpass what I lifted back then. My entire body is also toning up in general. Despite not doing any isolated exercises, my body is getting bigger and more defined.

Time to get crackin’

Are you ready to man up your workout routine? Head on over to StrongLifts.com right now. Yes, right now. Subscribe to their RSS feed or email updates, so you’ll get their latest strength training tips and, best of all, their FREE ebook on How to Build Muscle & Lose Fat Through Strength Training. It’s 55 pages full of useful information.

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